Random Family was published in 2003 and is the product of a decade of research and interviews by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. The book provides the reader with a detailed and intimate look into the everyday lives of people from the poor sections of the Bronx. It mainly focuses on two Puerto Rican teenagers, Coco Rodriguez and Jessica Martinez, who are fifteen and sixteen, The narrative begins in one of New York’s most desperate neighborhoods of the South Bronx. LeBlanc takes a deeper look into the families struggles living in the South Bronx.
LeBlanc perfectly illustrates the struggles that the families face in the book with love, drugs, trouble, and coming of age, and how difficult it is when living in ghetto. Readers learn that prison is just an extension of the neighborhood, a where place most men enter and a rare few leave. They learn the realities of welfare: the myriad of misdemeanors that trigger reduction or termination of benefits, only compounding a desperate situation. They see teenage drug dealers with incredible organizational and financial skills, 13-year-old girls having babies to keep their boyfriends interested, older women reminiscing about the ‘heavenly time’ they spent in a public hospital’s psychiatric ward and incarcerated men who find life’s first peace and quiet in solitary confinement. More than anything, LeBlanc shows how demanding poverty is. At the end of the book, you realize that every single subject in the book deals with the same psychological stressors that people face now.
Many people would disagree with how the subjects and neighborhood are portrayed in the book, but I on the other hand agree with the authors depiction. People sometime believe poverty is like a different world, but on the other hand feel connected to it in some ways. I first handedly witness some of the stressors that the families faced in the book. Moreover, some of my friends are from the South Bronx and the things they told me that goes on in their neighborhood is what exactly is portrayed in the book. When you grow up in a low-income neighborhood you start to become numb to the stress, and begin to see it as a norm. That is why children start to grow into the same bad habits their parents have.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events, including many forms of abuse and neglect. They can also include household dysfunction such as witnessing domestic violence or growing up with family members who have substance use disorders. ACEs are strongly related to the development and prevalence of a wide range of health problems throughout a person’s lifespan, including those associated with substance misuse. Many Research has demonstrated a strong relationship between ACEs, substance use disorders, and behavioral problems. When children are exposed to constant stressful events, their development spiral out of control. As a result, the child’s ability to cope with negative or disruptive emotions may be impaired. Over time the child may adopt negative coping mechanisms, such as substance use or self-harm. Eventually, these unhealthy coping mechanisms can contribute to disease, disability, and social problems.
Living in poverty can be hard for everyone, especially for children. Children who from low-income neighborhoods can face many childhood adversity, such as, child abuse, neglect, sexual and physical abuse, parental separation, and etc. Although there is many childhood adverse in the narrative, the two that stood out to me is Jessica and Coco’s daughter Mercedes. For example, Jessica and Mercedes have face multiple ACEs stressors including complicated family relationships, which made both have to grow up too quickly, sexual abuse, substance misuse with household, and etc. These stressors/traumatic events had put a toll on their lives while growing up and it affected their development and psychological circumstances.
In the beginning of the narrative when we first meet Jessica, it was 1984 and she was 16. We get through reading a few page into the book we find out that Jessica was sexually abused, by Caesar’ father from the age of three. However, some readers were to think that Jessica would stay away from men in general due to her sexual abuse, but that is not the case. ACEs tramas and the way people react to them can vary its effects from case to case. Jessica, on the other hand, tends to show the usual long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse, but she also craved men love and affection even more. According to the article “The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Counseling Implications” by Melissa Hall and Joshua Hall they stated, “Childhood sexual abuse has been correlated with higher levels of depression, guilt, shame, self-blame, eating disorders, somatic concerns, anxiety, dissociative patterns, repression, denial, sexual problems, and relationship problems (Hall, M., & Hall, J. 2011). Throughout the story you can see Jessica battling with depression and other sexual problems.
As Jessica reached womanhood, she is more sexually active and often uses her body/sex-appeal to her advantage. Trauma therapist Cassandra Rustvold reported, “When a child suffers sexual abuse, sexual arousal becomes activated prematurely and can largely impact the survivor’s sense of autonomy over their body and sexual sense of self” (Rustvold 2016). This further shows why Jessica always looking for pleasure in men. Therefore, she allows men to do whatever they want her sexually. “Having 30 or more partners was significantly associated with six of the seven categories of adverse childhood experiences-physical abuse (2.2), verbal abuse (3.8), sexual abuse (2.8), an incarcerated family member (2.3), household substance abuse (2.4) and household mental illness (3.3)” (Hillis, S., Anda, R., Felitti, V., & Marchbanks, P. 2001).
When Mercedes is separated from her father (Ceaser) because he’s in jail, it causes Mercedes to have many discipline problems, especially in school. After Ceaser’s incarceration Mercedes had to grow up quickly and take on some household responsibilities. Thus this situation made Mercedes fulfill parental roles most of the time when it came to her and Coco. In the book, Mercedes is describe as a “watchdog daughter” making sure that Coco did what was right (294). Moreover, since Ceaser being locked up, and Coco having to deal with her new life as a single mother Mercedes begin to me neglected at home and overlooked by everyone. According to Ross D. Parke and K. Alison Clarke-Stewart, in the article From Prison To Home it stated, “School-age children of incarcerated parents exhibit school-related problems and problems with peer relationships. Sack et al. (1976) reported that over 50% of the children of incarcerated parents had school problems, such as poor grades” (Parke, and Clarke. 2001).
